Seeding machines serve to sow seeds on a field. They comprise a seed container, a furrow opener, means for successive introduction of seeds into the furrow made by the furrow opener, and a closing wheel to close the furrow. The seed container should, as far as possible, be filled with exactly as much seed as is necessary for sowing a work assignment, for example, for one or more fields. If too much seed is put into the seed container, it must be removed, at least if different seed is to be sown later. More critical is the case when too little seed is present, since then in the worst case a part of the field will be left unseeded or at the least the seeding operation, when the lack of seed was detected by means of a sensor (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,070,539), will have to be interrupted and cannot be continued until the seed container has been refilled.
In the prior art it was proposed that the required filling amount for a seed container of a seeding machine be calculated by means of the area of the field and the number of seeds per unit of area, for which a program on a portable computer can be used (e.g., Seed Calc by Minskaysoft). The required weight of seed is calculated by means of the thousand kernel weight. This calculation assumes a constant number of seeds per unit area.
Furthermore, it was proposed (German Patent Application No. DE 195 32 870 A1) to create a path plan for a seeding machine over a field and, taking into account a site-specific advance planning of the seed rate, to calculate a point at which the supply container can be reasonably filled on the field in order to avoid empty and duplicated runs on the field. A similar planning of a path for a seeding machine and its refilling points, but without taking into account site-specific planned seed rates, is described in German Patent Application No. DE 196 29 618 A1. German Patent Application No. DE 10 2011 050 885 A1 proposes to calculate, by means of the entered or sensor-registered fill state of a single container of the machine, the available path that can still be covered with the machine using a known path planning, and if necessary to optimize the application rate and possibly the refill point in terms of saving time.
In the prior art that was mentioned, the seeding machine is provided with a single container from which the seed is withdrawn. Accordingly, calculation of the necessary filling amount is relatively easy in that one multiplies the area of the field by a constant (in the case of the said program) or variable (in the case of German Patent Application No. DE 195 32 870 A1) number of seed kernels per unit area.
However, there are also seeding machines in use, in particular single grain seeding machines that are outfitted with a plurality of seeding units disposed side by side, each of which has a separate seed container associated with it (see German Patent Application No. DE 10 2014 223 843 A1). In the case of such seeding machines, there are conceivable applications in which a certain seed container covers a considerably longer path while having the same seed spacings (for example when traveling on curves) and/or deposits considerably more seeds per covered stretch (for example when partial widths of the seeding machine are shut down because of the shape of the field or because seed rates vary over the width of the machine) than another seed container and for this reason must deposit more seed than the other seed containers. However, the previous methods for calculating the necessary filling amount cannot take these factors into account, which leads either to prematurely empty containers or seed remaining in the containers after the job. A similar problem arises when a machine deposits other agricultural materials such as fertilizers or pesticides onto a field from a plurality of containers distributed over its width.
Therefore, there is a need for a method for calculating filling amounts for side-by-side disposed containers of a machine for application of agricultural material that takes into account paths and/or application rates that differ over the width of the machine.
Furthermore, in the method known from German Patent Application No. DE 196 29 618 A1 for planning a path of a machine for application of material over a field, the said problem, that—in the case of ill-considered path planning—the container can empty at different rates, which limits the path run between refilling operations, is not taken into account
This invention is based on the task of solving, at least partially, one or more of the said problems.